WASHINGTON — Port authorities, trucking companies and shippers are hopeful that the infrastructure bill to be debated in Congress will fund solutions to alleviate congestion in the ocean container freight industry, panelists said Jan. 9 at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting here.

WASHINGTON — The agricultural industry and the ports that serve it are simultaneously working to respond to an evolving business landscape that includes everything from making room at East Coast ports for Neopanamax containerships to serving overseas demand for fresh fish, industry experts said here.

The average time it took a trucker to enter and exit the ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., inched up one minute in June from the same month in 2016, although data from the Harbor Trucking Association revealed encouraging signs that drivers are moving quicker than a year ago.

One year into operations of the expanded Panama Canal, the freight transportation world has witnessed leviathan containerships, gargantuan land-based cranes and dredging projects along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, but intermodal shipping professionals say it’s too early to quantify the precise impact of the massive infrastructure project.